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Cro Magnon Man and Atlantis

Since Cro Magnon Man was first discovered in 1868, he has presented fundamental puzzles for traditional scientists. Today there is still no solution in sight for the traditional anthropologists. A mere 20 years after his discovery, the Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky, published in 1888, asserted the answer to the mysterious origin of Cro Magnon Man. Since then, facts have been accumulating to further support Blavatsky's view. And more recently, starting in the 1980's and particularly in 1997, very scientific, and unexpected, evidence from DNA analysis has confirmed the accuracy of her claims and helped us to better understand the early prehistory of man. Briefly put, Cro Magnon was Atlantean. The location, dates, of his sites and the character of his culture, support the claims of Theosophy, showing that once again Blavatsky was right.

CRO MAGNON WHO?

Basic facts: Cro Magnon Man appeared abruptly in Europe and North Africa. He lasted from 40,000 years ago to about 12,000 years ago. The first recognized discovery of a Cro Magnon was in 1868, only 20 years before the Secret Doctrine was written.

Blavatsky quotes a man of science as saying:

On the contrary, one of the oldest types, that of the men of the sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon, is that of a fine race, tall in stature, large in brain, and on the whole superior to many of the existing races of mankind. (SDii678)

The scientist is quite right. Skull types are known after the name of the place where they are first discovered and Cro Magnon was discovered in a cave in France. He is still considered by scientists today to be taller and larger brained than the average human living today.

The first puzzle causes these physical characteristics to be not pleasant for the anthropologist. To fit in more gracefully with their theories, Cro Magnon should have been shorter and smaller brained than the average for humans today. However his actual characteristics are totally in accord with the assertions of Theosophy. They even represent yet another confirmation of Theosophical knowledge.

A second and major puzzle for anthropologists is that Cro Magnon man appears to arrive with his culture from no discernable origin. He does not show any discernable development. His culture was distinctly superior to others around him. This could be seen clearly in the nature of his tools. His art work was also seen to be superior. He painted those cave walls that we hear about and that Blavatsky commented upon. His culture does not appear to come from any source that we can identify. That culture gives all the appearance of arriving from elsewhere already developed.

If you would like a shock, check out this cro magnon drawing of a woman at http://atlantisquest.com/CaveDrawing.html . She is wearing clothes! Those clothes are sewn! She is wearing shoes and a hat! But I thought these were cave men who wore animal skins? And a note on the men - they were clean shaven!

These cave men also had houses! We do not know what exactly they were made of but we do have the post holes.

You can see by now that the cro magnon man is becoming undesirable from the view point of traditional science.

But the third and worst problem of all is that science cannot determine where his bones come from. His skeletal structure does not have traces developing from any surrounding area. And at that, his skeletal structure, as mentioned, is not what science would like to find.

To show you this yet more emphatically, here are a series of quotes showing the "developed somewhere else" nature of Cro Magnon culture:

According to Prof. Francois Bordes, world renown archeologist and former director of the Laboratory of Prehistory at the University of Bordeaux, the Aurignacian [Cro Magnon ] tool tradition without doubt originates outside of Europe, ready-made, although from where is still a mystery (Bordes, 1968). Dr. John E. Pfeiffer, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University observes: "The Aurignacian is quite distinct from the Parigordian" [ a separate older European style ]; they arrive "from some area outside of Western Europe"; with an already "established way of life."

Archeologist Frank Hibben states that the Aurignacian industry is "indubitably non-European in origin";

These "invasions" [ of earlier Cro Magnons in Europe ] are all associated with waves of Cro-Magnon occupation. No formative, or "gestation," stages have ever been found on any continent for any of the Cro-Magnon tool industries.

Professional anthropologists haven't the foggiest idea of the origin of these invasions. (Bordes, 1968) They invariably appeared on the western shores of Europe and Africa, even including some of the Atlantic isles next to those continents. Always the sites are clustered in the west, the number of sites diminishing towards the east [with an exception in the Levant]. Combe Capelle sites [of more ancient European man] are more or less evenly distributed all over Europe and the Near East. This has been a mystery that has plagued anthropologists for over a hundred years. To the west, there is nought but empty ocean: how could the invasions come from there?

The mystery of these invasions has been so embarrassing that today anthropologists don't want to talk about it any more. Some have gotten around the problem by blurring the distinction between true "Atlantic" Cro-Magnons and the "eastern" European types. Calling all modern men "Cro-Magnon," is merely skirting the issue; but this is not a scientific way to deal with the problem. (R. Cedric Leonard, author of Quest for Atlantis at http://atlantisquest.com/Anthropology.html )

DISTRIBUTION OF CRO MAGNON

To solve the mystery of Cro Magnon, there is one simple step to take - look at the distribution of his sites where his bones have been discovered.

Happily there is a good map of those locations online at http://atlantisquest.com/Cro-Magnon.html. It would well pay you in understanding the issue to give a look at that map. Briefly in words it shows the distribution as occurring in France, in the Pyrenees, along the Atlantic coast of Portugal, in southern coast of Spain on either side of the Straits of Gibraltar, in northern Morocco on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts and along rivers. (There are some other sites outside the area of that map that will be discussed later.)

What a visual check of the map makes clear is that Cro Magnon sites hug the Western shores facing the Atlantic Ocean for Europe and northern Africa. And as referenced above, the number of sites thin out as one moves eastward. The Cro Magnon came from the West. They had developed their culture in the West.

One can compare this map to Blavatsky's view and there is a distinct correlation. She claimed that Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean generally across from the same areas that are heavily populated by sites on that map.

For example, Blavatsky asserts a land connection in ancient days between Atlantis and North Africa:

What is now N.W. Africa was once connected with Atlantis by a network of islands, few of which now remain. (SDii790)

So then the conclusion is clear. There was an Atlantis where she said and the Cro Magnons came from Atlantis. Of course science can not place their origin. Their origin is not there any more. It sank.

Of course their culture was higher than those around them. It came from Atlantis.

Now there is one more key location of Cro Magnon man - that is, the Canary Islands. The aboriginals of the Canary Islands, before Spain discovered the island and destroyed most of their populace, were called Guanches. Science recognizes that the Guanches were Cro Magnon.

Today, due to some intermarriage, some traits of the Cro Magnon still atavistically appear - individuals will sometimes be taller and blond. Mostly the culture of the Guanches was wiped out. However, some mummies remain and as shown later some valuable information will be gleaned from those mummies.

The distribution map shows sites in northern Morocco. Those are today the Berbers. The Tuaregs are also a Berber speaking group that is nomadic. Science recognizes that the Berbers are also descended from Cro Magnon man.

The Berbers were in North Africa long before the Arabs arrived. The Berbers are considered the aboriginals of the area and their origins beyond that are not known. Atlantologists regularly claim them - especially since Lewis Spence wrote in 1924 The Problem of Atlantis (later renamed as The History of Atlantis as more confirming evidence came in).

From a useful traditional source:

Despite a history of conquests, the Berbers retained a remarkably homogeneous culture, which, on the evidence of Egyptian tomb paintings, derives from earlier than 2400 B.C. The alphabet of the only partly deciphered ancient Libyan inscriptions is close to the script still used by the Tuareg. The origins of the Berbers are uncertain, although many theories have been advanced relating them to the Canaanites, the Phoenicians, the Celts, the Basques, and the Caucasians. In classical times the Berbers formed such states as Mauritania and Numidia. (http://www.answers.com/topic/berber-people)

OUTPOSTS OF CRO MAGNON

Leonard establishes a point that has some value for vindicating Blavatsky:

So why bother with this obscure and out-of-the-way outpost [ in the Levant: Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine ]? I am convinced that, at least toward the end, the Atlantean civilization was an empire. From the evidence uncovered, there were outposts, not only in the Levant, but also on the Atlantic seaboard of Africa, the Canary Islands, in northern France, in Egypt, the Bahama Islands, in Peru and Bolivia, and possibly even Antarctica. http://atlantisquest.com/Outpost.html

That quote caught me eye because a very careful reading of Blavatsky will show that she also connects Peru just as Leonard does.

While that lead is too much to follow up here, there is also a second very interesting point that cannot be followed. The same outpost of Leonard will, in some distant newsletter, be shown to harbor the Natufian Cro Magnon man. And that man will be shown to have an interesting aside to tell since it started recording a calendar just about exactly when the calamity of Atlantis occurred - some 12,000 ago. But that is for a latter time.

BLAVATSKY ON CRO MAGNON

Blavatsky's next quote sums up much of her view in connecting these anthropological elements together. But just to summarize a few facts: The Basques are in the Pyrenees and derive from the Cro Magnon. The reference to "men of South France" below as refers to Cro Magnon man. The Guanches are the now deceased aborigines of the Canary Islands and are of Cro Magnon descent. So what is the "proposition she is referring to below?

For further facts as to the isolation of the Basques in Europe and their ethnological relations cf. Joly, "Man before Metals," p. 316. B. Davis is disposed to concede, from an examination of the skulls of the Guanches of the Canary Islands and modern Basques, that both belong to a race proper to those ancient islands, of which the Canaries are the remains!! This is a step in advance indeed. De Quatrefages and Hamy also both assign the Cro-Magnon men of South France and the Guanches to one type-a proposition which involves a certain corollary which both these writers may not care to father. (SDii790)

Obviously the proposition that they would not like to father is that the Atlanteans moved both to South France and to the Guanches in the middle of the Ocean. Otherwise, how does one group end up in those two places?.

For a similar statement she comments on Professor Retzius as giving her direct "patent" support:

The following quotation runs with No. (2), but its significance is such and the writer cited so authoritative, that it deserves a place to itself:- "With regard to the primitive dolichocephalæ [ those who have a head unusually long (front to back) relative to width (as do Cro Magnons) ] of America, I entertain a hypothesis still more bold, namely, that they are nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the Atlantic populations of Africa, the Moors, Tuaricks, Copts, which Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian-Atlantidæ. We find one and the same form of skull in the Canary Islands, in front of the African coast, and in the Carib islands, on the opposite coast which faces Africa. The colour of the skin on both sides of the Atlantic is represented in these populations as being of a reddish-brown." (Professor Retzius, "Smithsonian Report," 1859, p. 266.)

(The Tuaricks mentioned in the above paragraph are the Tuaregs mentioned still earlier as descended from the Cro Magnons.)

If, then, Basques and Cro-Magnon Cave-Men are of the same race as the Canarese Guanches, it follows that the former are also allied to the aborigines of America. This is the conclusion which the independent investigations of Retzius, Virchow, and de Quatrefages necessitate. The Atlantean affinities of these three types become patent. (SDii791)

Here she says it again in shorter form:

A race which MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy regard as a branch of the same stock whence the Canary Island Guanches sprung-offshoots of the Atlanteans, in short. (SDii678)

Here she is quite clear:

The Guanches of the Canary Islands were lineal descendants of the Atlanteans. This fact will account for the great stature evidenced by their old skeletons, as well as by those of their European congeners the Cro-Magnon Palæolithic men. (SDii791)

And finally, she claims all of European paleolithic man as Atlantean:

Palæolithic European man of the Miocene and Pliocene times was a pure Atlantean, as we have previously stated. The Basques are, of course, of a much later date than this, but their affinities, as here shown, go far to prove the original extraction of their remote ancestors. (SDii790)